Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Nathaniel Philbrick Quotes

For me, ‘Moby-Dick’ is more than the greatest American novel ever written; it is a metaphysical survival manual – the best guidebook there is for a literate man or woman facing an impenetrable unknown: the future of civilization in this storm-tossed 21st century.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

Instead of being a page-turner, ‘Moby-Dick’ is a repository of American history and culture and the essentials of Western literature. The book is so encyclopedic that space aliens could use it to re-create the whale fishery as it once existed on the planet Earth in the midst of the 19th century.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

It is impossible to say when 37-year-old Benedict Arnold first met 18-year-old Peggy Shippen, but we do know that on September 25, 1778, he wrote her a love letter – much of it an exact copy of one he’d sent to another woman six months before. But if the overheated rhetoric was recycled, Arnold’s passion was genuine.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

‘Johnny Tremain,’ Paul Revere’s Ride, today’s Tea Partiers – you have to tune all that out to get at the real story.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

Maybe it’s because I was named for him, but I’ve always wanted to meet Nathaniel Hawthorne. It’s oversimplifying, but all Hawthorne’s short stories and novels are, in one way or another, about guilt. Something profoundly disturbing must have happened to him at an early age. I’d like to know what that was.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

What’s been largely forgotten is that Washington was highly passionate and aggressive, and it was only after losing Philadelphia to the British after a string of disastrous battlefield performances that he finally resigned himself to the more conservative approach with which he has since become associated.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

I’m not one of these people who want to tear down our heroes and that kind of thing.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

XTC is my favorite band; I’m a huge Neil Young fan, Jayhawks, all that type of stuff. I like Death Cab for Cutie, also Ryan Adams. I try to impress my children: ‘Have you listened to such-and-such?’ They’re not impressed.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

Some of my books sort of have a provocative take. Sometimes you find interesting things about characters that show they weren’t necessarily the way people usually see them. It can make for lively conversations, but that’s great. Spark a little controversy, get people to think about it. That’s what it’s all about.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

In my early 20s, I was a big fan of Theodore Dreiser and might be one of the few people on the planet who have voluntarily read all his novels.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

Washington worked very hard to create his legacy. Even before the War of Independence was over, he was assembling his papers and making sure they were going to be in a state of preservation that would represent as best he could the official side of what occurred during the Revolution.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

For the very young, there’s nothing better than Mother Goose and anything by Dr. Seuss for the rhythms and language.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

As long as I can remember, I’ve been writing – first poems, then stories, and by my early teenage years I was also in love with sailing.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

I don’t subscribe to the idea that the founders or anyone else were somehow better than us and that we have to live up to their example.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

I’m a big Stephen King fan.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

If you live on Nantucket, you can’t avoid its history, and ‘Moby Dick’ is the way most of us get into Nantucket’s history.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

I do work-related stuff on airplanes. Then, when I’m in the hotel room or just vegging out, I read for pleasure.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

I’ll watch anything, from action to art films.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

You cannot underestimate the influence of Shakespeare.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I’m writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

We think of the revolution ending in Yorktown, Va. The fact of the matter is that the French defeated the British in a naval battle right in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Because the British fleet was coming to rescue Cornwallis, the British general, Washington was able to surround Cornwallis.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

Unfortunately, we have a tendency to see figures from the past as caricatures – either all good or all bad – when the truth is always much more complex.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

Whatever you read, there’s no better place to read than the cockpit or the berth of a boat. It’s kind of like being in a womb.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn’t have the courage to go. I was a tremendously shy person, almost pathologically shy. The thought of peers critiquing my work – oh, God.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

We think of Washington as the defensive-minded pragmatist who won the Revolution by avoiding unnecessary risks on the battlefield. But that was not how he started out.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

We’ve got a yawl named the Phebe, which is named for a boat in a whaling journal my father and I edited. We keep a copy of the journal on board.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

- 1
- 2